Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Starkbeaumont]

If they lower tank dps anymore I'm done tanking.

I actually enjoy it in this game since you can do ok dps unlike other MMOs I'v eplayed where a tank does like 25% the damage of a dps.

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

[FallenWings]

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

Maybe he wants to contribute to the goal of the fight rather than be there solely to enable it?

Maybe people want to be a shining master swordsman/raging berserker/deathly black knight instead of a worthless punching bag with pool noodle weapons?

[Reynhart]

Maybe he wants to contribute to the goal of the fight rather than be there solely to enable it?

So, keeping the boss on him is not "contributing" to the fight ?
And actually greatly depleting the boss HP is not "solely enabling" it ?

[FallenWings]

So, keeping the boss on him is not "contributing" to the fight ?
And actually greatly depleting the boss HP is not "solely enabling" it ?

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.

Then what?

So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?

What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

How else have you impacted the fight after meeting those two checks?

Yes, all you've done is allow the possibility for "greatly" depleting the bosses' hp. Any further input from you as a player beyond enabling that bare minimum necessity for completion, means nothing.

Even worse, when said opportunity is not even being utilized by the DPS.

So what now?

In a world that once existed where a Tank is but as I've said, a punching bag with flashing lights.

You've become exceptionally skilled at generating massive amounts of hate to allow the maximum potential from the damage dealers and beyond.

You've mitigated exceptionally well to the point that your healers need only press one basic heal button every 20 seconds.

The progression of the fight has not changed since you've only barely kept your hate above the DPS's max potential, or when you've managed to survive the rate of incoming damage.

Your huge aggro lead is worthless.

Your excessive mitigation does nothing but flaunt the iron wall perception.

Now, you sit there, and hope to be carried by the DPS.

At the end of the day, if you're in a good group or a bad group. What you do means nothing, because you cannot in any shape or form change the outcome of the bad group away from failure.

Not to mention a large part of a game's enjoyment is also the theme and visual style.

Why does a hulking greataxe/greatsword or the iconic broad/short/longsword pathetically bounce off the most snuggly moogle when a kitchen knife causes said moogle to violently explode into guts, bones and other visceral matter?

[Reynhart]

So you've kept your hate above all your teammates.
Then what?
So you can survive the tank buster,

Now what?
What separates you from a common tank that can meet the same check?

I'd be really happy to answer these questions if every instance of "I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS" wasn't brushed away by the community with a "Doing DPS is a tank's job"

[Shurrikhan]

I'd be really happy to answer these questions if every instance of "I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS" wasn't brushed away by the community with a "Doing DPS is a tank's job"

And the broad alternative was given last page. With a single difficulty level, basing a tank's job much higher on mitigation events would mean that the difference between a good tank and a mediocre one isn't just dps, but primarily whether they're still living.

Now, I do really like a desperate fight to survive, but if every 20th second is a "do this or die", how is the average or under player going to feel when tanking? Rather than "I think you can do more dps than that, yah?" or "Where's mah stance-dancing, tank?" where most current fights don't need that much from the tanks anymore, you have death, repeatedly, from any under-performing tank.
Not to mention that there then becomes virtually no chance, under that added boss damage (only alternative being less combined mitigation/restoration/damage/utility from tanks, mostly from the mitigation side), of a dps being able to hold on for a moment of tanking when the real tanks go down.

Even then I do think it's a decent point for debate, as I think our goal constantly should be finding community and—better yet—ingame means to try to bring up our struggling players rather than dumbing down content for them (typically to their disbenefit, however more broadly inclusive we intended for the game to be in doing so), but just keep in mind that SE probably has a decent, if overly cautious, reason for what they've done with tanks lately—they're playing it safe.
Should they not? If so, what all should they change (in this one regard)?

[Lyth]

Solo tanking doesn't make tank dps less useful. If you designed a tank that could solo a fight, you're going to prefer players who offer more dps while solo tanking. You could design a solo tank job who main heals while singing songs and baking cakes, but the instant groups saw a player who knew do all those things while maximising their dps, that player would be preferred to tank content.

"I wanna be challenged as a tank, not as a would-be DPS"

This is a nice sentiment. If you want a challenge, though, you have to seek it out.

Groups like Lucrezia used to do below minimum ilvl clears of older fights between raid tiers, such as i55/AF T5 and i90 T9. To facilitate this, the game now includes a minimum ilvl option. This can provide some fairly stringent mitigation checks. You can't really say "I want to be challenged" unless you've already exhausted the existing challenges in the game, as well as imposed some of your own. You can always find ways to push yourself.

When I think of mitigation challenges, I think of fights in which the tanks take more damage and survival becomes more dependent on cooldown use. This means less access to "tanky" gear and less passive damage reduction. I don't think you can request "tankier tanks" and "mitigation challenges" in the same breath.

[Reynhart]

Solo tanking doesn't make tank dps less useful. If you designed a tank that could solo a fight, you're going to prefer players who offer more dps while solo tanking.

Problem is, offering more DPS is always done by sacrificing mitigation. It's how tank stances work. Fights actually allow you to do that because they're all designed around predictable flow of damage, so a knowledgeable tank knows when he can afford to sacrifice mitigation and when the healer can compensate.

Groups like Lucrezia used to do below minimum ilvl clears of older fights between raid tiers, such as i55/AF T5 and i90 T9.

Problem is, theses restrictions don't actually change how you play your job. The CD rotation is still the same, the strategy is the same and the flow of combat is the same. The only thing that changes is that you have a smaller cushion for mistakes.

When I think of mitigation challenges, I think of fights in which the tanks take more damage and survival becomes more dependent on cooldown use. This means less access to "tanky" gear and less passive damage reduction. I don't think you can request "tankier tanks" and "mitigation challenges" in the same breath.

Actually, you can, it just have to work on active mitigation, and challenging enmity control. As with my Mystic example, having to constantly keep a barrier is more challenging that popping a CD on a predicted timer. As for enmity, it would require a great overall, but to sum up, I'd say that DPS should do much more damage, and I mean really much more damage, to the point that keeping enmity on them would be hard, and that they could have to hold back a little if their tank fails to gain enough enmity.
But, with a really good tank, they would have enough room to go full power and wreck everyhting.

MMOs are abandoning the idea of a tank doing a fraction of a DPS' overall damage, largely because killing things while soloing/questing takes a looooog time if you make tank damage output low

That's what DPS stances are for. But when actually tanking, allowing tanks to stay in DPS stance is pretty...weird. But it can easily be fixed. Give tanks the same HP as DPS, and make tank stances having a far higher mitigation. 20% damage reduction is clearly not enough when you already have around 50% more HP than most DPS.

[Falar]

Maybe he wants to contribute to the goal of the fight rather than be there solely to enable it?

Maybe people want to be a shining master swordsman/raging berserker/deathly black knight instead of a worthless punching bag with pool noodle weapons?

Yeah, running around tickling things with a huge greatsword would be lame.

[Sarcatica]

why not play a DD then? i wish FXIV would focus more on tanks being actual tanks in raid content and less on being additional DDs that can take hits better.

They technically can design encounters that focuses more on tank checks, but admitedly the skillgap between players is too much. If you introduces so much damage to tanks more often, it becomes really frustrating for new tanks to get into raids, see t13 in ARR. Good tanks will simply adjust their playstyle but not so for the rest. It'd be boring to just stand still and take damage too. SE hasn't changed this part for tanks and healers to stop doing DPS for patches now. You also do need to understand that you only need to do enough damage to clear raids (that number is still high enough for most tanks to achieve), pushing damage is an extra. Enrages for Creator fights is also lenient enough, a12s has enrage timer of 13:30 iirc and most groups can clear it within 12mins. So you don't absolutely need huge dps tanks do clear current raid, just have competent tanks to deal respectable damage to enable clearing raids.